


Terra Nullius

by Luthor



Category: Alien Resurrection - Fandom, Alien Series
Genre: F/F, Post-Movie fluff and lesbianism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 09:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14185614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthor/pseuds/Luthor
Summary: Ripley and Call and a Dusty Old Mattress, oh my!"It’s an innocuous suggestion that leads to Ripley’s half-naked body wrapped around her in slumber, and if asked otherwise, Call will plead the fifth."





	Terra Nullius

It’s an innocuous suggestion that leads to Ripley’s half-naked body wrapped around her in slumber, and if asked otherwise, Call will plead the fifth.

The semi-truth of it is, her body runs hotter than most human beings’, and she doesn’t have the strength to carry the burden of watching one of the four of them, of watching _Ripley_ , in particular, die from hypothermia after surviving the _Auriga_. The irony of it sits like cotton in her mouth, makes her swallow and swallow and clear her throat, like struggling through an unwelcome taste.

 

 

 

The _Betty_ is a sight for sore eyes by the time she finally lands, and while all agree that it fits in perfectly with the Parisian shit-hole aesthetic, they can also agree that it’s likely to draw unwanted attention. Attention that comes with big guns and bigger questions, the likes of which Call, nor the other three, want to stare down the barrel of.

That leaves them with said Parisian shit-hole to find a place to bunker down for the night.

 

It’s Johner who finds the apartment block, half-blackened and boarded up where a fire has scorched through the building.

Vriess, strapped to his back, rolls his eyes and winces as Johner clears the front door with brute force.

“Honey,” Johner croons as he steps past the threshold, “I’m home.”

There’s no answer from within, aside from the howling wind as it passes past and through empty windows.

The walls are black and thick with the lingering stink of smoke. Johner leads the way up a staircase, creaking with each footstep, until they reach the first floor. There’s a pocket near the back of the building almost untouched from the flames. “Locks are busted,” Johner says as he kicks an apartment door open. The meagre light coming from whatever windows are left in the apartment paint a picture of dust and disuse, of obvious abandonment.

Johner steps inside with a sigh. “What a shithole.”

“Slept in worse,” Vriess says from his back, and Johner grunts in agreement.

 

Steps behind them, Call plants her feet just before the threshold of the apartment door.

Every instinct is telling her not to enter without a proper light, without being able to see if the shadows on the walls are just that, or if they’ll scatter at the touch of a torch beam, if they’ll slither up behind her while she’s unawares. The cool, damp touch of the alien hybrid’s elongated fingers still lingers over her cheeks; she shudders, and almost startles at the hand that lands on her shoulder.

Ripley is a full head taller than her; she makes Call crane her neck to see her face, and the smile there that’s gentle and fleeting.

“Come on,” she says, and brushes past on her way inside.

Call watches her until she reaches the far hallway and stops in a doorway, silhouetted by dim light. She’s all shoulders and jawline; when she turns back to check on Call, it’s with downturned curiosity and a little pleading. Ripley no longer looks the intimidating figure that she had aboard the _Auriga_. The journey to Earth has left her battered and bruised and exhausted, and that’s only what Call can see on the outside.

She wants to ask Ripley what happened on the _Betty_ , but doesn’t know how. Truthfully, she isn’t sure Ripley would know how to answer, either.

“Will it do?” Call asks once she’s inside, the door closed and unlocked behind her.

She puts her back against one wall and surveys what was once a living room. There are marks on the floor where furniture has been dragged, and cheap curtains still attached over the window. The wooden floor shows the marks of people who have passed through here, as they too are passing through here.

“Stinks of shit in here,” Johner says, sniffing as though he’s trying to locate a dead animal, but Call’s attention is on Ripley.

“Can we stay?” she asks again, while Ripley takes in the rooms, the windows, the lockless door. She’s quiet in her search, but it’s a distracted quiet, like she isn’t sure what she’s supposed to be scanning the room for when there’s no likely chance of a xenomorph lying in wait in a dark corner.

“Ripley?”

“For the night,” Ripley answers, finally. She looks out of place, adjusting an empty photo frame on a dusty shelf. “Until we can find something… better.”

_Permanent_ , Call thinks she’d meant, but it’s a tentative and unlikely word given their present situation.

“It’ll do for the night,” Ripley repeats, firmer now, shaking her distraction. “There are two bedrooms. Call, you and I can take this one.”

Call agrees quickly to hide her surprise.

“Looks like this is the little boys’ room,” Johner says, loud enough to be heard through the carcass of an apartment, as he steps into the doorframe of the remaining bedroom. It’s almost as large as the living room, with a hollow chest of drawers and conspicuous stains on the floor. No bed, but that’s never stopped him from sleeping before. He lowers Vriess with unceremonious grace and dumps a bag in his lap just as quickly.

“Sort through that,” Johner tells him, before Vriess can object. “There’s no way I’m sleeping here without a gun in my hand.”  

 

Ripley’s choice in rooms is decidedly smaller, but with one advantage.

Call eyes the double mattress taking up the majority of the floor space with uncertainty and no small amount of reluctance. _Desperate times_ , she thinks, pressing her lips together. While she knows logically that the mattress could be teeming with bacteria and she’d never pick up a thing, she really has spent too long pretending to be human.

Ripley is no less affected.

She flips the mattress, and then flips it again, eyeing the resulting dust cloud as if weighing up the pros and cons. The simple truth of it is, after running for her life from the _Auriga_ and the nightmare onboard, a dirty mattress is practically within her comfort zone. She toes the edge of it, feeling it spring back against her foot, and turns to Call as though to say _that settles it_.

It’s only one night, Call reminds herself, and doesn’t argue.

“I’ll take this side,” Ripley says, as she steps around the mattress.

She drops the bag that she’s carrying in what little floor space is left, and crouches to begin digging through it. Call takes to the remaining side, sits, and unfastens her boots. Her feet don’t ache the way a human’s would, from having walked as far as they have, but it’s nice to be out of them. It feels better. She slips off her socks, massages the pressure points at the heel, arch, and balls of her feet, and then slips out of her jacket, too.

She makes a neat little pile of outerwear, and then turns just in time to see Ripley stand and begin unfastening her belt. The blush in Call’s cheeks may be artificial, but the warmth behind it is not. She turns to give Ripley her privacy in undressing, but there’s little for Call to distract herself with, but the folding and re-folding of her jacket. She lies down on the mattress, and Ripley is quick to join her.

The room turns quiet again, and Call can think of no appropriate conversational starter.

Doors down, the sound of Johner and Vriess’ conversation is like the hum of old machinery through the walls. The banging, clanking, and murmur of voices so slow and unintelligible that they could well be anything else, is familiar if not especially comforting. Call is used to life aboard a ship, she’s familiar with the lack of privacy and space. She turns to Ripley just enough to spy her from the corner of her eye, and wonders what she’s thinking, what she makes of their ragtag foursome. She wonders if Ripley doesn’t just think she could make a better start for herself out here without them.

“I can hear you thinking,” comes Ripley’s voice in the semi-dark, quiet and vaguely amused.

“Sorry,” Call says, and Ripley turns her body fully to face her. After a moment, Call sighs and meets her gaze. “It feels like weeks passed while we were up there. My body doesn’t get exhausted the way that a real person’s would, but my mind is… it’s been a lot to process, is all. Even for me.”

“For me, too,” Ripley agrees, and Call struggles to understand why such a simple admission from Ripley is so reassuring. Holding her head up on one hand, Ripley watches her with squinting eyes, as though trying to collect her thoughts and put them into words. “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she says, finally, stretching the muscles in her jaw and then relaxing. “Being a real person.”

Call opens her mouth to argue, and isn’t given the chance.

“You’d be dead, already, if you were.”

She can’t argue against that; Call didn’t take her first bullet aboard the _Auriga_ , and Ripley looks far too aware of that as she studies her.

“I’d be dead, too.”

“Does that justify it?” Call asks. “Our being alive. When we’re like this?”

Ripley frowns, but not in anger. She seems to consider not Call’s question, but the motivations behind it, or else the hazy matrix of paths that led towards its culmination. She tilts her head, sympathetic and confused, further down to study Call’s face. The expression behind it is frozen, is giving nothing away, even as Ripley probes for answers.

“Is any of this justified?” she asks, finally, and it’s too big of a question for either of them to contemplate in one night. “Try to sleep,” Ripley tells her, and Call does not argue (does not mention that she could remain alert for the entire night without consequence). Instead, Call watches as Ripley turns her body until she’s facing the wall, and then settles.

In the next room, Johner and Vriess’ conversation dulls and then quiets completely.

Ripley listens to the silence that isn’t really silence, filled with unasked questions and unspoken answers, thick like flammable gas in the air. Ripley doesn’t know what else she can say, without it being the spark that sets the entire room ablaze. She wonders if she’d been too blunt, or not blunt enough; she wonders if she’s upset Call without meaning to, or if she had meant to, or if Call had upset _her_.

She will exhaust herself, like this, and it will be exhaustion without sleep.

Instead—

“Call,” she says, and detects the subtle shift in Call’s manufactured breathing pattern, “I’m cold.”

There is tense quiet, a forced stillness in which every draw and release of her own steady breathing sounds multiplied to a volume obscene enough that she considers holding her breath. The mattress dips. There is warmth against her back, gradual and then _there_ , suddenly, all around her, encompassing her until it’s almost too much. One thin, uncertain arm slides around her waist at a respectable distance from anything important.

Ripley shifts, finds Call’s hand in the dark, and pulls it flush against her chest beneath her chin – holds it there, holds Call against her, links their fingers.

_Justify this_ , she tells the universe at large, and closes her eyes.

 

 

The morning arrives in shades of pinks and oranges; sunrise through the cloud cover basks the Parisian skyline in rust.

Staring out at the wasteland from the remains of the _Betty_ , it is not an unlikely image. The city at large looks ancient and deserted, like an old photograph of decrepit war-sites from ages past. Call squints against the brightening sky, out to where the horizon is thick with industrial grey fog. She does not doubt the likeliness of there being life out there, thriving life, and in no small way does it frighten her.

A noise behind her, and Call turns to see Ripley wrangling another box from the _Betty_. It’s dropped with care while Ripley wipes the sweat from her brow and steps up beside her, taking in the view.

“It’s a wreck,” Call says, and is almost surprised by Ripley’s quiet laughter.

“It’s a start,” she corrects, and Call doesn’t have it in her to argue.

_It’s all we’ve got_.

Ripley looks out at the decapitated skylines through eyes that are both new and old, with more appreciation than she ever had the first time around. She finds beauty now where she never would have seen it before.

Looking from the Parisian wasteland to Call’s shining eyes, she thinks there’s more truth to that statement than she ever could take credit for.


End file.
